BBC News Channel Presentation - 21/03/16 onwards

So does that mean the Global News output isn't going to get their on-screen graphics refreshed alongside the other BBC News output?

In February?

How do you work that out? He says it’s across two 24 hour news channels so that presumably means BBC World News too.

On the 29th.

At the rate it's going it probably will be February 29th 2020. Or 2024.

BBC World News, is not the Global News output. I am talking about BBC News Arabic, Persian, Bengali, Turkish, etc At the moment they share the same branding and on-screen graphics (with different logos) and with the Right to Left language supported where appropriate.

Put it this way, BBC News isn’t simply going to replace one font with another, and that’s why it’s a massive job.

In the rolling news channel galleries, lower thirds are automatic and appear according to the data entered into the running order by the journalist reposinsble for that item. If it’s an edited package, the details are put into the running order with in and out times. If it’s a live sequence in the studio or on an outside source a sequence of pre-written lower thirds is started (either via automation or manually by a text producer). These can be amended, dropped or added to on the fly as required and can be replaced manually by name captions for a guest or reporter. Push backs are created by graphics producers and are run as required. All lower thirds, pushbacks and a lot of full frame graphics (including catwalks) are created in the newsroom by journalists via Viz templates. Bespoke graphics are designed by a team of graphics designers as required. Designing the templates (of which there are a LOT) takes a huge amount of time and effort, as they have to be so flexible. Consider for example a full frame graphic which is a series of quotes, perhaps an exchange in a court. How many quotes? How long are they? Do you want (or even have) a photo of each person in the exchange? Are there more than two people conversing? Apart from the design and alignment, there are so many variables to consider when programming a template.

Alignment of items is a thorny issue not least because there are many different bits of kit, keyed separately in some cases working across different outlets from different studios. There can are also sync timing issues between sites, as well as physical separation (Salford vs London for example) which can making lining everything up precisely to the pixel harder than it ought to be.

Finally, consider the rest of BBC News, all of which will be working to implement these changes at the same time. All using different kit (some of which is decidedly old), most of which is SD. Even with the best will in the world, converting from HD to SD can introduce alignment issues, let alone using legacy kit like Aston.

Thanks for that deejay. Great insight.

Perhaps using graphics which use boxes which are *meant to* randomly overlap slightly (a bit like the overlapping cards of the new itv graphics) would make this easier. If they’re not meant to align perfectly it won’t matter when they don’t.

The BBC has less scope than say Sky News to be "quirky" with its on-screen presentation, but there are ways to add "breathing" space around elements, and still present graphics on screen.

But even with new graphic templates, it will take time as there is the process of preparing templates for all the different production equipment like Quantels, Viz, After Effects, Premiere, Avid, which all match a designed spec. Getting fonts optimised for the older SD tech. Testing the new templates with the equipment in a way which does not disrupt the live on air output.

I am assuming the BBC News Design department or BBC Creative teams have decided on what the new on-screen design will be, and the various processes are now being undertaken to get all the elements ready to go live. I could be wrong, they could still be tweaking things.

This is all assuming the overall BBC News branding is not being given a fresh look by an outside agency. For what it is worth, I think the current titles and branding could do with a few updates, as they have been in use either in SD from 2008 or updated to HD in 2013 - which is over 10 years.

On the day of more Brexit headlines, BBC News must have all sorts of things crossed that there's a unequal number of goals at The Hawthorns in the next 45 mins of play. At HT in the FACup replay its WBA 0-0 BHA, more shuffling is on the cards at present.

Are we going there again assuming with pages of speculation of what the BBC will do with the news in the event of extra time only for them to do what they always do?

That said this always looked a poor replay pick on paper.

Extra Time is looming!